The Expendables 4’s rating will ensure it avoids a key mistake of the previous entry – but it also has to avoid a Megan Fox mistake her previous action movies had made. Sylvester Stallone tailor-made The Expendables franchise as a way to make the kind of old-fashioned, R-rated action flicks that provided him with his biggest hits. The Expendables films were also a way for him to work with other genre luminaries, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Statham, Bruce Willis and countless others. When the first two movies were big successes, the producers behind the saga made a tactical error with 2014’s The Expendables 3.
Series producer Avi Lerner had long wanted to make The Expendables movies PG-13 rated so they could appeal to a younger audience. In fact, The Expendables 2 had been sH๏τ as a bloodless, bad language-free PG-13, until some R-rated gore was added in post-production when there was an online backlash to this decision. The Expendables 3 fully embraced its PG-13, resulting in a tepid outing that alienated fans of the first two outings and failed to appeal to a teenage demographic. This resulted in The Expendables 3 grossing $215 million worldwide, a tally that was down exactly $100 million from the second entry.
Expendables 4 Being Rated-R Fixes A Problem With Expendables 3
Shortly after The Expendables 3’s box-office disappointment, even Stallone admitted the PG-13 decision had been misguided. It’s taken nearly a decade to mount The Expendables 4 as a result, with Stallone stepping back to a supporting role while Jason Statham’s Christmas becomes the new lead of the franchise. The Expendables 4 also comes with an R-rating, a decision that immediately upgrades it from Expendables 3. From its inception, the series was designed to be a throwback to the action blockbusters of the ’80s and ’90.
The Expendables 3 attempted to abandon that tone in favor of something closer to the Fast & Furious franchise. Maybe that made sense to producers on a financial level, but it also placed The Expendables in a box that was a bad fit. Time will tell if The Expendables 4 is actually a worthy sequel, but at the very least, it will carry the harder edge that audiences come to the series for.
Expendables 4’s R-Rating Has To Avoid Megan Fox Just Being The Love Interest
The Expendables 4 has largely eschewed franchise formula by not recruiting major action icons in supporting roles. Instead, newcomers including 50 Cent, Andy Garcia and Megan Fox, who plays Christmas’ new love interest Gina. The trailer partly built itself around the steamy relationship between the pair, with Gina also shown to be part of the тιтle team. That said, The Expendables 4 trailer put an emphasis on Sєxualizing Fox’s Gina, without giving much of a showcase for how she fits into the story.
In addition to “strong/bloody violence” and “language,” Expendables 4 earned its R thanks to some “Sєxual material.” This is no doubt down to the love scene between Statham and Fox, but while the Transformers movies or Jonah Hex tended to rely on the star for Sєx appeal, Expendables 4 can’t fall into that trap. Gina needs to be a key member of the team who isn’t just kidnapped or killed to motivate Statham’s Christmas. That said, a lot has changed since the time Fox appeared in the Transformers films, and it’s doubtful she would have signed onto Expendables 4 if the role didn’t have some meat to it.